Charity in a can of creamed corn

Got to thinking as I was in the grocery store today, buying canned goods for various Thanksgiving food drives…

Most charity in the country is a matter of people without a lot of money helping out people with no money.

Rich people when they give tend to give BIG but to institutions or causes. Their money helps individuals, eventually…

But help for people who need it right now to get through the week or the day tends to come from people digging into their pockets…

Pockets that usually aren't deep and have been dug into a lot already by their owners who needed to pay their own bills.

Simply put, it’s the difference between people who can afford to dash off a check and people with change left over to throw into the jar by the cash register.

Food banks are stocked with items thoughtful people put in their grocery carts as they’re shopping for their own dinners and judging they can manage the little added expense this week.

The result is that food drives mean a lot of people eat canned vegetables and boxed sides bought on sale for their Thanksgiving dinners.

I'd feel bad about this...well, worse, if it wasn't for the fact that canned vegetables and boxed sides were what I was raised on...

...and we thought we were eating well.

“Mmm. Creamed corn! Thanks, Mom!”

But we were eating well. This was how the middle class lived. Think about it, what a convenience and a relief and a help and a luxury it was for housewives and mothers of Mom Mannion’s generation to be able to go to the supermarket once a week and stock up!

Full cupboards. Full plates.

And of course many of these donated cans are going into the cupboard. People have to eat on the days after Thanksgiving too. The food has to be stored. It's going to sit in cupboards on a shelves for a while.

So it's all for the good, I guess.

What I really wish is that I could afford to fill up two or three or four shopping carts with canned vegetables and boxed sides…

and throw in some jars of jam, bottles of chocolate syrup, and boxes of cake mixes and Frosted Flakes.

Vegetables are good for you and Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving without creamed corn and yams. But life is meant to be a banquet and every meal should be a celebration.